Saturn in Scorpio: Challenging Inner Changes Ahead

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”

-- Joseph Campbell

Saturn -- the cosmic taskmaster -- is getting ready to leave the sign of Libra after two-and-a-half years of putting us through the relationship ringer. On October 5, Saturn takes residence in the dark waters of Scorpio. Between now and 2015, secrets, emotional courage and resourcefulness will be key themes.

This karmic phase brings up issues around money, power, sexuality and our fear of change. It’s about shedding old skin in order to make room for the new. This is the kind of absolute, head-to-toe, psyche-to-soul transformation -- there’s nothing light or easy about it. There’s no point in clinging to the old and the outworn. Scorpio is the death archetype for a reason. Parts of us must die in order to be fully reborn as our true, most powerfully authentic selves.

Scorpio rules our sacred sexuality, our life force, so Saturn will also be asking us to look at how we use and lose that energy. How conscious is our sexuality? Does it empower and heal or do we use it to gain power or destroy? As always, Saturn expects nothing less than full integrity. Nothing cheap or you will pay the karmic price.

Scorpio is the sign of letting go and relinquishing outworn attachments. So when change begins to ripple through your life, don’t fear it -- embrace it with every atom of your being. Clinging to the past, harboring addictions (to relationships and substances), repressing emotions -- all of this behavior will get you a lashing from Saturn in the form of some external event that you can’t control. And that’s really the key to the Saturn in Scorpio experience: it’s about recognizing that much of existence is not really in our control, and that’s okay because we don’t need to run the show. We just need to run our own lives.

We must face our personal lives and the collective experience with love, openness and the willingness to deal with our own demons. The more we push through the psychic morass we inherited from our parents and purge it, the more we give this option to others, and thus transform all of humanity. Saturn will keep you bound in fear until you choose to let go.